You might have excellent service or brilliant products to offer to your customers. But that would not make any difference unless people know your brand. If you plan on setting up a new business, remember that conventional marketing is no longer an optional marketing strategy. Nowadays, brands and their marketing teams invest a lot of effort in staying relevant. They want to appear on Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds as much as possible because this is how users remember them. Social media can help a startup tap into a massive audience and leverage a wide range of features if done right. Therefore, to help you with startup marketing, we have compiled a list of tips that will not let your business go unnoticed.
With so many brands in the market fighting for attention, it is essential to come up with something that makes you stand out. It can be hard to start creating social media presence, especially for startups, as they build everything from scratch. But, there are a few tips that can act as a guide along the process.
Begin With Realistic Goals
Sailing a ship without a definite course of direction increases the likelihood of getting lost. Likewise, you cannot start distributing content on your social media without having clear goals in your mind. Therefore, develop content goals that are SMART–Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. Apart from being realistic, your strategy ought to be flexible enough to adapt to sudden changes as per the need of the hour. Never shying away from supporting worthy social causes, Nike has 240M followers on Instagram. Their campaigns inculcate everything from sharing inspirational stories to addressing the pressing concerns of the time.
Know Your Target Audience
Before devolving into the process, identify which part of the population you want to target. Your content strategy is successful only when your audience understands what you want to say. Dove is known for their ads highlighting women’s empowerment. Their feel-good campaign aims to improve self-esteem by showing people how to be comfortable with themselves. It has not only broken beauty stereotypes but built brand loyalty. Hitting suitable zones among the right people is what extracts sales. It helps the overall reputation of your brand. In fact, while you learn about content marketing for startups, knowing your target audience is one of the initial and crucial steps. This eases the process of knowing how many buyers are interested in their services. Facebook lets you reach the audience after assessing attributes such as likes, age, behavior, country, and region related to your startup’s niche.
Select the Right Platforms
Undoubtedly, social media has the power to attract traffic, generate leads, and boost your profit. But it works if only you choose your platform wisely. After gaining clarity about your target audience, identify which platform to utilize. B2B brands usually focus on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. On the contrary, B2C businesses reach their audience via Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Chipotle was one of the first brands to include TikTok trends in its social media strategy. By introducing fun challenges on TikTok, the brand continues to entice young customers and gain popularity. You can also identify your preferred platform once you are clear about your target audience.
Know When to Target
One of the biggest mistakes in startup marketing is not knowing what and when to post precisely. There is no point in posting the content, no matter how perfect, when your users are not active to see it. When putting so much time and energy into coming up with unique and valuable content, you need to make sure it crosses your audience’s sight. Therefore, track and take notes of the days and time zones during the day when your consumer base is most active. Evaluate each target platform separately and post your content during expected peak hours.
Stay Relevant to the Trends
Starbucks has separate accounts for its stores located in several countries. These feeds contain aesthetically pleasing pictures of relevant seasonal drinks. Staying up-to-date with social media trends is as necessary as knowing your industry trends. As a brand on social media, you will need to keep track of the latest trends and facts and inculcate them into your social media content. In addition to relevancy with trends, your social media pages must be up-to-date. Amp up your social media game by creating an attractive profile. Notice and update even the intricate details like picture sizes. Above all, ensure that the data on your page is authentic and complete. Discard old and outdated content from time to time.
Keep the Users Engaged
No social media strategy is complete without enough user engagement. Gear your social media strategy to ensure maximum likes, shares, comments, brand mentions, and reactions to your content. All the engagement that your content receives is essential for your brand to build a connection with your audience. The Royal Academy has devised a creative strategy to engage its audience. Their fun and interactive Daily Doodle campaign has earned them much user engagement. Paid content also helps ensure good reach because, with ever-changing algorithms, you cannot entirely rely on organic reach alone. Depop’s Instagram feed is a balanced mesh of reposts from the users, influencer marketing, and paid content.
Get Your Hands on Every Necessary Tool
It gets very challenging to formulate a strategy without any insight into numbers. New startups are in a constant process of accepting and rejecting plans. So, in situations like these, social media analytics tools help you identify how well your content strategy performs. In addition, having an analytics tool is perfect for understanding your consumer behavior. Besides, it helps you evaluate your competitor’s place in the market. As a result, you have a clear picture of where you stand against your competitors. To schedule your content effectively, you can put a publishing calendar to use. It is an excellent way to maximize your reach through an organized online presence.
Collaborate With Bloggers and Influencers
It is always a good idea to leverage the power of social media communities and groups to promote your business. Building a community takes a lot of time, so collaborating with celebrities and influencers on social media is another way to lure people to your page. Chanel is one of the most influential luxury brands on social media. It has continued to grow due to its diverse content and consistent audience engagement on Instagram. One way it does this is through collaborating with celebrities like Kristen Stewart and Margaret Qualley. Millennials spend most of their day on their phones, scrolling through their newsfeeds. Millions of them follow social media influencers and trust them. Therefore, collaborating with such influencers is another way to bring people to your page.
People Like Stories
A huge part of content marketing relies on telling stories. The endorsement strategy gets more effective when linked with an anecdote. Gillette did this when working with Shaquem Griffin who is missing his left hand due to amniotic band syndrome. The brand did not ask Griffin to talk about getting a nice clean shave. Instead, they used his story to send a message about overcoming hardships and becoming the best version of yourself. For a startup, the story can include the history of the brand they are nurturing and developing. Moreover, they can frequently post glimpses of your work culture to associate a positive vibe with your brand. An engaged audience is an enthralled audience. Such kinds of audiences trust the company they interact with, whose content they rely on for information about an industry, not just a product.
Fundamentals of a Good Content Team
Now that you know the essentials of effective social media content strategy, you need a team that understands every intricate detail of the process. A good content strategy asks for your effort but so does creating a reliable team. A content marketing team can vary from startup to startup. However, some fundamental roles stay the same. A loose sketch of a complete content team can include:
- Marketing Strategists for planning the content your team will work to develop.
- Content Writers who creatively utilize their expertise to curate the desired content.
- Content Editors for pruning the raw content and assembling it into something meaningful.
- Proofreaders to ensure factual and grammatical accuracy.
- Graphic Designers for adding colors to the content per the startup’s needs.
- Videographers to meet the demands for video content.
- Content Promoters who distribute and effectively market the content on relevant channels.
- Marketing Analysts who keep an eye on how the content is performing and find out what is not working for the brand.
Should I Hire a Content Marketing Firm?
Yes! The increasing need for excellent social media content strategies has increased the demand for content marketing agencies. With millions of businesses striving to claim their place on search engines, you have no choice but to outshine them. For startups, it is wise to outsource the content to an agency with expertise in the area. With their years of experience and industry exposure, experts from dedicated agencies can cater to all your content needs. Be it blogs and articles or product descriptions and case studies, they can help you convey your brand message loud and clear. You only have to ensure you hire not just a content marketing firm but a partner who will give their best to help your business reach new heights.
Wrapping Up
Almost every brand out there has social media presence. But why do some of them entice more eyes than their competitors? The reason is that these have a well-devised social media content strategy. Users nowadays are smart enough to see the amount of effort put into the content on their screens. They can instantly figure out when brands post only to stay active and appear on their newsfeeds. Most startups take social media content lightly because it appears simple. Unfortunately, it is complicated but aids exponential growth if done right. Consistency and the assistance of the right tools can help you improve your practices.
